Harry Potter Word Prompts
by H. K. Rissing
Summary: Various one-word prompts for characters from Harry Potter.
1. Crummy

CRUMMY

As Ron Weasley pulled back the covers of his bed and put his hand under his pillow, nestling down to go to sleep after a long, not particularly pleasant summer's day at the Burrow, he noted with a squirm of anger that there were crumbs under his pillow. Seized by a fit of fury, he yanked back his orange pillow and swept the offending crumbs viciously to the ground, where they sat, innocent and impossible to have their origins discerned. It wouldn't have surprised him if Fred or George ate something in his bed and left the crumbs there for the express purpose of ticking Ron off.

As he threw his pillow back into place and slammed his head down onto it (and was rewarded with a sharp, stinging pain where he hit his skull against the headboard) Ron fumed as he remembered his day. IT was a hot summer, and all of Ron's brothers were home. Therefore, Ron had spent the entire day being bossed around, pushed, shouted at, and being "affectionately" roughed up. Firstly, he hadn't gotten enough breakfast, because Charlie ate it all, and he couldn't ask his mother for more because she was so busy fussing over Bill's hair. He had spent the better part of the day sitting on the grassy hill in the woods near their house grumpily with his chin in his hands, watching his brothers play Quidditch. He had wanted to play so badly, but they had _laughed, _ (his face still burned with shame an hour later) and told him he was simply too small, and besides not nearly good enough. But if he wanted to be useful, Charlie had said, in a too bright, honeyed tone that Ron guessed was supposed to be kindly, he could go and fetch them water when they asked. Ginny, who was still a sweet little Raggedy Ann doll, would babble happily on for hours about Harry Potter or hair ribbons to anyone who would even pretend to listen. She was perfectly content to sit on the sidelines, cheering on the team of whichever brother had brought her the prettiest little trinket, but Ron (who's received nothing) wanted so much more. Ginny just didn't know what she was missing yet.

She would when she was his age, when she'd be off to Hogwarts the next year. When she knew she'd be off with a second-hand rat and a second-rate wand, and third-hand robes and tattered spellbooks, her name already known but nothing more than a card in the deck, just another Weasley. When the idea of going to a school inhabited by people who would talk down to her because of their father, because of her lack of new things and funds, people who'd already decided what to think of you before they even knew you would set in. That people would undoubtedly laugh at him for how stupid he'd look in his fraying, patched robes (thanks, Fred and George) was what really drove home the meaning of "poor" to Ron.

Poor was not only not having enough money to get what you wanted, but also living in a house held together by spit, prayers and magic. Poor was that stupid Luna Lovegood coming over to play with Ginny and saying, "You house is a very shabby little place, isn't it?" Poor was going to work with his father and being yelled at by a stern, angry witch with a protruding black mole on her face for picking up a Galleon from the Fountain of Magical Brethren- not to keep it, but just to look at it. He'd never seen something so shiny and clean in his life. She had said things about "trashy, ignorant families not teaching their mangy, snot-nosed children about proper etiquette" which she had said just because he was Arthur Weasley's son, because there wasn't a person who didn't know that the Weasleys were poor. It had made his father's ears go violet, and Ron had been so ashamed. Poor was sleeping in a lumpy (crummy) bed under the attic because your mother had said, "maybe next year- you don't really need a new one, do you, dear?" when he'd asked for a new one. Poor was people down in the village whispering, "There go those crummy Weasley kids again."

In fact, Ron decided, as his probing fingers flicked more fragments out of his bed, crummy was the perfect word for right now. It described his feelings, his home, his clothes, his family, and his entire situation to a T right now. Crummy.

**Yay, my first Harry Potter word prompt! I always gathered from the books that his family's financial woes were a great source of shame and angst for Ron. Please let me know what you think!**


	2. Knight

Ginny cannot quite recall the first time she heard those magic words. Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived, that name that you ended up repeating to yourself for hours, turning it over and over in you head so that you can hear all of it's facets. She must have been very young, at least two years before Hogwarts, one year before she saw him at Platform Nine and Three Quarters, where it hadn't occurred to her to think anything but, "He's looking at me, he's looking at me!" She went home and wrote in her black leather-bound journal, to sympathetic, understanding Tom, wrote him _all _about good, great, Harry Potter.

She remembers her first year at Hogwarts. She remembers (with a flush of embarrassment) the horribly obvious fangirl crush she had on him. She even figured out what classes he was in during every part of the day, and then couldn't pay attention in her lessons, because she was too busy imagining him in his. Tom certainly heard about that. She remembers sitting in the stands on the Quidditch pitch, watching him soar, like he was planning to cut the air with his broomstick handle, a smile lighting up his face, and all she could think, disjointedly, was that she had to become a world class Quidditch player, just so she could make the team and watch him smile like that more often.

She cannot remember much from the Chamber of Secrets. She remembers a- a what? Specter, ghost, memory of a boy-man, lanky, tall, pale, dark hair, a grown-up Harry , unfurling himself from the translucent pages of her diary, her secret keeper, her best friend. He introduces himself as Tom, and Ginny doesn't think he looks at all the way Tom, someone so sensitive and compassionate, should have. He tells her that she should not have given her every precious secret to a stranger, and he smiles hungrily as he draws closer to her. Ginny falls backwards without so much as a whimper, because she is so cold she feels as though her skin might have flowers of frost on it. Her last thought before the darkness ebbing at the corner of her vision swirls over her eyes is that she hopes Harry Potter will come to her funeral.

She does remember waking up in the Chamber. She woke up at the sound of high, peeling scream, and Harry Potter's voice, ringing strong, so full of conviction and unable to be suppressed, backed by a phoenix's stirring aria, and her blood pounded hot again. She opened her eyes and saw Harry. His school uniform is grimy and in tatters, he is covered in slime and dirt and blood and ink, and he is running towards her, swinging the Sword of Gryffindor like a baseball bat. Just like the princes and knights in shining armor in the Muggle tales she liked to hear so much when she was younger, he came when she was in trouble, bearing strange gifts to help him defeat the evil king, slay the monster, and rescue the princess. Of course, this makes her the princess, and you don't hear a tale when the princess and her prince don't ride off happily, to be together for all time, faded smiles on surreal faces inked onto yellowing pages, made immortal as they stared into each other's eyes.

She got over him, went on with her life, tried to forget the things that ran through her head as he helped her out of the Chamber, helped her out of the nightmare that had been her life for the past few months. He became a friend and another brother, but the memory of him wielding the Sword of Gryffindor to save her stayed, and she could never quite eradicate the knowledge that he was her prince, and one day their love would be immortalized, too. She managed to forget this, at least for a while, managed to persuade herself that she actually loved Dean and Michael and Colin and all the other boys she dated, and gave little pieces of her heart to all of them. In her fifth year, she fulfilled something of a lifelong dream and kissed Harry Potter, which she had never let herself imagine was a possibility. She knew then, that the only person her heart could ever possibly belong to fully was this scarred man who held her hand, who had charged in, sword drawn, banner blowing, to release her from the manipulative grips of 16-year-old Voldemort. Everything was perfect, wonderful: Harry loved her, and told her she was beautiful and smart and _his, _and Ginny could have lived in those seven meager weeks of sheer bliss forever. It seemed like everything would be all right for once.

But then her prince, for all intents and purposes, kissed her good-bye on his birthday, and disappeared. Her prince took one of her brothers, and one of her best friends with him, and now Ginny had to go to Hogwarts by herself, with no one to remind her that the Boy Who Lived still loved her. He took her fairytale ending with him, too, and when Ginny realized that, she resolved to do her would-have-been father-in-law James Potter proud, and wreak as much havoc on Hogwarts as she could. She resolved to forget her shining prince and perfect ending, the fruition of so many years of dreams. She kissed Neville once, in the Room of Requirement, and his face had prickly stubble on it. This kiss had been full of desperation, two lonely frightened people who everyone was depending on to be a spot of hope in these darkest of times. Two people trying to fill the shoes of their effortlessly brave once-ringleader who was now gone from the halls of Hogwarts. Two people searching for some sort of comfort, solace, confirmation that what they were doing was right. Ginny cried herself to sleep that night, sobbing quietly for all she had lost.

The nightmarish scene from her first year is replayed at the end of her sixth . Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, faces down Tom Riddle, He Who Must Not Be Named, and his voice rings strong and sure out around the large Hall. Tom should have the upper hand (Ginny catches herself looking at the silver disc of his face, trying to find any hint of handsome, altruistic Tom who was her only friend for a year ) but Harry still prevails. Ginny does not feel happy, but rather numb. Was this reign of terror truly over? Could she once more dream about her fairytale ending? She realizes something crucial as Harry calmly looks at his enemy's body, crumpled on the floor, and then his gaze sweeps the silent hall and locks with hers. All these years she has been calling him her prince, when in reality, all princes do is a whole lot of nothing. Harry has done so much. He is her knight, her knight in shining armor. After the final battle, he sweeps her into his arms, and happiness explodes so violently within her she actually cries from it. It would appear that she needed the touch of her knight, his warm arms holding her, his heart pounding with hers, to validate that this was over, to thaw her, because when he left she was frozen. Just like the last time he stormed in to save her, he brings her back to life. He rescues her from everything just by breathing in and out, her knight in shining armor.

But then that has always been her knight's, her Harry's specialty. Saving her.


	3. Wedding

Bellatrix sighed as she stood in front of the huge mirror. Her springing black curls had been swept up to the back of her head in a most elegant pouf, with a few tendrils wispily framing her milk-pale face, and dripping down her neck like glossy dark fingers. She sister and matron-of-honor, Narcissa, had made up her face ever so expertly but in the greenish light of the dressing room, she looked sallow, unhealthy, and just a little ghostlike. Normally, due to her utterly alabaster complexion, she favored dark colors, and felt out of place in this dress. It was made of white lace that clung diaphanously to her arms, bared all of her shoulders, and followed the contours of her torso very closely. After coming to an absurdly tight point at her waist, it pooled out so far that she had no idea how her father was planning to walk down the aisle next to her. More white lace and dark gems that glittered like beads of blood chased each other over the prodigious amount of ivory satin in slightly sinister designs. The back of the dress bared the whole expanse of her white spine, held together with pale cords, and the skirt trailed behind her for several feet. Her sister and mother were wrapping her thick sable locks around the stems of a silver diadem created to look like serpents and leaves, which matched her choker and wrist cuffs. A truly colossal black ruby hung from the choker and it trembled against her anemic collarbones every time she gulped down another breath. The veil that was attached to the coronet was cloudy white and smelled of dust and powder. It spilled behind her even further than the hem of her dress, and fell to just past her knees in front of her. It blurred her features like a fine mist, making her eyes look all the blacker and huger.

"Oh, Bella, you never looked lovelier," Narcissa sighed, hands clasped over her chest, sheathed in her dark bridesmaid dress. The candles flickered tremulously as she exhaled sharply, and responded, "Well, I swear, if you can ever get me out of this fluffy death trap, I'm never putting my hair up again." Her mother smiled briefly, and handed the bouquet of dark roses, bound together with darker lace, to her. "You look magnificent, darling, every inch a Black." She said, and Bellatrix felt a small flutter of warmth at the evident pride in her mother's tone, but she hid it. "Well, I shant be a Black for much longer, shall I?" she rejoined quietly. "The Dark Lord himself suggested the match," countered her mother in a much sharper tone. "If it is what he wishes, then you have no right whatsoever to question him, and sulk like a bratty little wretch. You should be right grateful, I might think, that even after the blunders of those wastrels Regulus and Sirius, and of that filthy piece of trash Andromeda, the Dark Lord still thinks enough of the family Black to arrange such a decent, respectable, wonderful marriage for you." Bellatrix looked at her mother belligerently for a moment, then responded quietly, "Sirius was _not_ a wastrel." Her mother laughed cruelly. "Oh, yes, I forgot, you fancied yourself with him, fancied that you could change his nasty, recalcitrant, contentious ways, that he could serve the Dark Lord faithfully with you! Well, let me tell you this, my pet, you'd have married that good-for-nothing, ungrateful little scab over my dead body, and still never have changed a thing." Tears quivered in her shining eyes as she forced herself to hold it together. She would never let this woman see her that weak. Biologically, yes, she was her mother, but she had never been close with or grateful to her female progenitor. "I'm going out there to tell them all that you're ready, and you'd best get out there and smile like it's the best bloody day of your life." Her mother said, jutting her chin out aggressively, as though daring Bellatrix to try and stop her.

As she swept out of the tiny dressing room, the candles guttered and winked out, leaving behind wisps of grayish smoke. Now, with the light of a quarter moon slotting down into the dressing room from a high window as the only light, she looked more than ghostlike, she looked like the wraith of a drowned girl. But her eyes were that of someone being burned alive- filled with so much pain. She tottered down from the low stool she had stood on for the past hour and into her sisters' arms. Narcissa embraced her lightly, and brushed feathery fingers over her hair, so as to impart comfort, but not to ruin her elaborate hairdo. "There, there, Bella, dear, if the Dark Lord wishes it, how bad can it be?" she asked soothingly. "I do _not _love Rudolphus Lestrange, I don't even like him all that much!" she burst out into the cup of her sister's shoulder. "Bella, sweet, when did you ever think that for girls like us, love would play into equation?"

Bellatrix looked at her sister with tears hanging from the ends of her lashes. "But at least you liked Lucius when he announced the Dark Lord had given him permission to pursue you. At least you fell in love with him. At least he's a gentleman. Lestrange is a pig!" Narcissa clasped her hands around her sister's shoulders. "If it's any consolation, he's a filthy rich pureblood pig, and as time passes, you will come to love him, the way I have come to love Lucius." Bellatrix snorted derisively. "Come to love him? Don't make me laugh! There's only one man to whom my heart belongs, and it has just been made abundantly clear that _that's _never going to happen. I could never love anyone but _him!" _she declared passionately. Narcissa picked her sister up off the floor, where they had been huddled, and straightened the creases in her voluminous skirt. "Well, you'd best get as drunk as you can on all that French champagne Father ordered, then, so you can forget about your lack of a heart to give before it comes time for you two to retire for the night." Bellatrix rolled her eyes and responded, "Obviously, I would prefer not to have to, but I'm not too worried about _that,_ it's the whole waking-up-next-to-him-for-the-rest-of-my-life part that I'm concerned about. Having him introduce me as his wife, Madam Lestrange? Wearing his ring for the rest of my days? It just feels so utterly degrading!"

Narcissa arranged the thorny creepers of the bouquet so that they looked like they were growing over the front of her lavish gown, and smiled benignly. "Your independence means everything to you, Bella, I know that. But despite your insisting, Lestrange is no fool. He won't try to control you and order you around like some common slut. And there are other benefits of marriage," she said, fluttering hands ceasing their fussy work as she smiled into the middle distance. Right on cue, her tiny son Draco began mewling from his bassinette. She carefully pulled the veil down over her sister's now-composed features, and then bent at the waist to pick up her son and cuddle him close to her bony clavicle. He ceased crying immediately, and nuzzled her neck with his squashy face, stubby little baby fingers closing around her necklace, as if to keep her from putting him down. His silvery-blue eyes appraised Bellatrix for a moment, and then drifted shut. "We'll see you out there, Bella." Said Narcissa. "And you really look beautiful, darling." She called over her shoulder. She, still cradling Draco, swept past their father, who had just opened the door, deposited her precious son with his grandmother, and took her place in the procession. Bellatrix held her head higher, squared her shoulders, and snickered quietly to herself. She fixed her most deranged, dangerous smile in place, because Sirius had always said she was at her most lovely when she was at her most insane, and slipped her fragile little hand in the crook of her father's elbow.

They sailed down the aisle, the very picture of embellished opulence, baroque resplendence, intoxicating power gone mad. No one but Bellatrix, Narcissa and the Dark Lord himself knew that under her pristinely creamy dress, she wore her thigh-high, lug-soled, intricately laced black boots, and under her wan, vapidly smiling exterior, she was screaming. When she closed her eyes that night, it was Sirius' face she saw in her head, smiling and laughing and making lewd quips about how she looked in her wedding dress. She got the feeling that no matter how many years she was married to Rudolphus, (she supposed she must call him by his first name now, and hoped he wasn't expecting her to come up with some ghastly term of endearment or a pet name to refer to him by, or to permit him to call her anything of the like) it would always be Sirius' face in her head.

**I'd say this one is a littler darker than the others, because it's about Bellatrix Lestrange. I always imagined that she was in love with Sirius, who loved her back to a certain degree, but when he ran away from home, that effectively ended any plans they might have made together. (The fact that they were cousins probably would not have weirded them out, as pureblood families such as the Gaunts seem to have a habit of marrying family members) So she's still in love with Sirius, but having to marry Rudolphus Lestrange at Voldemort's insistence, and in a few years will have come to terms with Rudolphus and devoted herself completely to Voldemort. Then there would be his fall, her sojourn in Azkaban, and her subsequent descent into madness. If she wasn't already a little insane. **


End file.
